Cardinal George Pell appears at Royal Commission

Cameron Houston, Jane Lee

Cardinal George Pell has defied criticism of the contentious Melbourne Response and claimed his 1996 intitiative was Australia's first comprehensive redress scheme for victims of clerical sexual abuse.

Appearing before the Royal Commission via video link from the Vatican, Cardinal Pell likened the Catholic Church's responsibility for child abuse to that of a "trucking company", whose driver had sexually assaulted a hitch-hiker.

"I don't think it appropriate for the leadership of that company to be held responsible...If every precaution has been taken, it's I think not appropriate for legal culpability to be foisted on the authority figures," Cardinal Pell said.

Sean Cash, a lawyer for abuse victim Paul Hersbach, challenged his trucking company analogy, saying that because the Catholic Church was an organisation of the "highest integrity" it had a far greater moral responsibility.

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He said it should not impede victims' ability to receive full and fair compensation.

Cardinal Pell said the original $50,000 cap on ex-gratia payments from the Melbourne Response was "no less generous" than any other redress schemes in Australia at the time. He said the payments were not intended to compensate for losses victims had incurred: "In some cases the loss of earnings might have been more than that."

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When Mr Cash asked Cardinal Pell if he was familiar with the evidence provided by Mr Hersbach at the commission on Monday, he received a sharp rebuke.

"We were among the front-runners in Melbourne in addressing these scandals and I would suggest to you that that is entirely consistent with Catholic tradition and the teachings of Christ."

He also apologised to Christine and Anthony Foster, who won a $750,000 settlement from the Melbourne archdiocese after two of their three daughters were sexually abused by paedophile priest Father Kevin O'Donnell in the late 1980s.

Mr Foster has said Cardinal Pell displayed a "sociopathic lack of empathy" when they met to discuss the case in the 1990s.

"It was certainly not my intention to upset them. I wanted to help them. I regret deeply that I have been unable to bring them even a small amount of healing," Cardinal Pell told the commission.

But earlier on Thursday, the church's lawyer Richard Leder was forced to explain insensitive and incorrect statements made in correspondence between himself and senior figures from the archdiocese and the Melbourne Response.

The comments were made in reference to an application for church funding by the Foster family, who requested the church pay for special accommodation for their daughter Emma. She suffered from depression, anorexia and drug addiction.

But Mr Leder accused the Fosters of kicking their eldest daughter out of home, while Carelink established under the Melbourne Response rejected their funding request.

"The request for Mr and Mrs Foster does not suggest there is any link between Emma's need for accommodation and any treatment that she requires. Rather, she is homeless because her parents kicked her out," Mr Leder wrote in a letter.

Mr Leder could not recall any basis for the comment and apologised to the Fosters, who have attended all of the commission hearings in Melbourne.

In other letters submitted to the commission, Mr Leder claimed the abuse suffered by Emma at the hands of O'Donnell, was "relatively minor" and doubted the sexual assaults were responsible for her drug problem.

Mr Leder told the commission that Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart had "strongly held views that every effort should be made to settle" the Fosters' case.

He said it was in the Church's interests to settle the matter before court, and that if they had won at trial "that would not be a victory that the Archbishop would have enjoyed," Mr Leder said.